Thaïs: Adaptation, Degeneration, and Intermediality. (July 2014)

• Record Type: Journal Article
• Authors: Rowden, Clair
• Is Part Of: Dix-neuf. Volume 18:Number 2(2014)
• Page Start: 134
• Page End: 149
• Publication Date: 2014-07
• Subjects: France -- Study and teaching -- Periodicals; 944.007
• DOI: 10.1179/1478731814Z.00000000049
• Languages: English
• ISSNs: 1478-7318

Abstract

<abstract> <title> <x content-type="archive" xml:space="preserve">Abstract</x> </title> <sec> <p>This article examines several forms of intermedial adaptation arising from the creative and reception processes of the opera <italic>Thaïs</italic>, premièred at the Paris Opéra in March 1894. With a libretto by Louis Gallet and a score by Jules Massenet, the opera was based on the 1890 novel by Anatole France. Written in an age of Symbolist and post-Wagnerian aesthetics, the opera used innovative orchestral interludes to capture the philosophical tenets of the novel, and, in a social and medical climate preoccupied with decadence and degeneration, it depicted Thaïs as a mystical hysteric. Press reception of the opera in caricatural and parodical forms treated these and other reception issues via temporal and geographical re-contextualizations of the opera's story, producing complex intertextual discourses and meta-discourses. Within these intermedial processes, each version of the <italic>Thaïs</italic> story used and adapted the conventions of the previous genre to fit the new, thereby creating a network of narratives in an exploration and understanding of communication and meaning, convention and genre.</p> </sec> </abstract>